On Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:43:59 +0000, Moray Allan wrote: (Outsider point of view following.)
> (a) where there are mistakes and significant gaps in the summary, > compared to what really happened in previous years; IMO your summary describes quite well what happened in the last years. > (b) what improvements we could make to the process in the future. Some thoughts after following the last couple of decision meetings on IRC: > - Venue decision meeting 2: First of all I think it's important to have a chairperson and a timetable beforehand. > * Quick introduction from each team, and quick questions to each > team -- ideally by now everyone should already be clear on the bid > statuses. > > * Bid teams describe how their bid meets each of the points on the > priority list (http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/PriorityList). > > * Bid teams describe weak points in their own bids. > > * Bid teams describe strong points in other bids. These stages worked quite well in my experience. > * Then we work through the priority list, considering where bids are > stronger than each other. > > * A decision is made. Even if there's already agreement on each > bid's advantages, this isn't simply a mathematical calculation: some > aspects are more important than others. And these points were not so optimal IMO. - Going through the priority list sounds reasonable and is necessary in one way or another; I've perceived it as extremely long and tedious in prior meetings, and my impression was that it favoured those who had more endurance and "fought" harder, and disadvantaged teams who were more willing to concede own weak points (or were simply less awake or less vocal). Especially the disputes about "half points" and the bargaining ("Ok, same for point A if we get more for point B") seemed counterproductive to me. - "A decision is made." sums up my main issue quite well -- it's not specified who takes the decision and how it's taken. If my memory doesn't deceive me it was like "No, we don't just sum up points" in the beginning and then "Hm, what do we do now, everyone's tired etc. -- Ah, it seems X has won as they have more points. Fine." I guess this situation puts a lot of stress on the bids' representatives, as they both want to see their bid win and play nicely at the same time (which contradicts each other to a certain extent, and the latter doesn't pay off when the outcome of the calculation is important), especially as it's not so clear what happens after going through the list and collecting points. I don't claim to have "the solution" at hand but I think changing this rating procedure and especially clarifying the actual decision making are the points to start at. Maybe it would help to take some of the steam out of the decision meeting if the roles were changed a bit, i.e. if the bids' representatives were not forced to rate/agree on a rating on the checklist points for the proposals and this task was moved to some more neutral parties ((members of the) global team, nominated referees not involved in the bids, etc.). -- If the points are necessary at all (maybe they just try to give an impression of transparency and objectivity that doesn't and can't really exist). It feels a bit weird to say, but maybe the approach to try to reach a consensus is also not the best method in this case, and some kind of voting (again preferably by a jury of people not involved with the bids) at the end would make the decision itself clearer and less painful (and reduce the importance of the mathematics before). Just some thoughts from a happy and grateful DebConf participant. Cheers, gregor -- .''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ -- GPG key IDs: 0x8649AA06, 0x00F3CFE4 : :' : Debian GNU/Linux user, admin, & developer - http://www.debian.org/ `. `' Member of VIBE!AT & SPI, fellow of Free Software Foundation Europe `- NP: Penelope Swales: Strange Hands
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